Oskar Blues Feels the Blues of Demand

Oskar Blues Brewery of Lyons, Colorado has a problem, a big problem. Despite adding nine 200-barrel (6200 gallon) fermentation tanks, they cannot keep up with demand. In fact, they’ve got so much demand for their canned beers such as; Gubna, Ten FIDY, Dale’s Pale Ale, and Mama’s Lil Yella Pils, that they have had to drop distribution in eight of the 26 states they service. Oskar Blues founder Dale Katechis said that, at the current rate of demand, recent orders by distributors may not be filled until mid-October.

Oskar Blues didn’t have plans to expand to their brewing operations in 2010, but the demand has been so high that seven out of the nine tanks they ultimately planned have already been installed in the last 60 days. Now able to produce about 5,500 barrels of beer a month, putting them around 44,000 barrels for this year. The added capacity allows Oskar Blues to have Gubna available year round.

“It’s not our model, and we don’t have the desire to be the largest brewery in the world or the largest craft brewery.”– Dale Katechis.

Other breweries around of the U.S. have also been expanding to keep up with demand for their products. If this doesn’t say something about the health of the craft beer industry, we don’t know what does.

Oskar Blues can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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